


Whenever you find fault, ask yourself: What fault of mine most resembles the one I am about to criticize?

by heliza24



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Minor Anne Bonny/"Calico" Jack Rackham/Max, Minor Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:56:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28494972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliza24/pseuds/heliza24
Summary: A rewrite of a scene in Episode 4.6, when Flint and Silver have rejoined Jack, Max, and Anne after surviving the Spanish invasion of Nassau. What would happen if Flint had spoken to Max and at least one of them recognized the other's queerness?A little gift for Katie, for being the best pirate crew member a girl can ask for.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw & Max
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Whenever you find fault, ask yourself: What fault of mine most resembles the one I am about to criticize?

Flint pauses for a moment in the bowels of the sloop. He has finally talked some sense into Jack, who wanted to flee to Port Royal, or Saint Michael, or any British port where their group of survivors could catch their breath. But of course now is not the time to hide. If they can just get back to Maroon camp and have time to regroup, they will be fine. Flint knows this. Jack knows this. But it took twenty minutes for Flint to remind Jack that he knows this, because Jack is functioning somewhere just above chicken with its head cut off on the functionality scale. He likes Jack, really, and feels vaguely forgiving towards his current cowardice considering that his main source of emotional stability is currently bandaged within an inch of her life and lying unresponsive on a hammock in the hold. On a good day Flint would be able to leverage this somehow, turn Jack’s worry about Anne into worry about the cause. But it’s a bad day and Flint can feel a headache brewing.

He is suddenly aware of the blisters on the back of his heels and the dried blood still sticking to his forehead. He absentmindedly wonders if it is his or Eleanor’s. The past few weeks have been one monumental battle after another: the absolute carnage during the invasion of the blocked harbor, the bloody retaking of Nassau, surviving Billy’s mutiny. Ever since he was a boy he has functioned best in survival mode, his well of adrenaline one of his most reliable assets. As long as he is in motion, he is unstoppable, and he and his men know it. It is standing still that is dangerous. And today has ground him to a dead stop. 

He wipes his hand over his face. He can still see the after image of the flames when he closes his eyes, and his shirt smells like smoke. He is mad at how much Eleanor’s face haunts him, the memory of her taking her last breaths in his arms. She betrayed them, married the enemy. And yet. Even in her last moments, he recognized that absolute certainty of conviction that had drawn him to her in the first place. There had been moments early on when he sensed that she wanted something more from him than tactical allyship, some kind of father-shaped hole she subconsciously wanted him to fill. It had always unnerved him a little; it was very much something he was unprepared to give. But in her last moments he felt himself assume that role. He lied for her and she died safe in her convictions, like a child. At least he was able to give her that. 

In some ways he barely knew Eleanor, yet he still got to hold her when she died. That he didn’t get that with Miranda, that he couldn’t even keep the house he had shared with her for a decade… if he thinks about it too long he will crack open. 

And he can’t afford to crack, now that Madi is gone and Silver is deep in grief. That is his next job, he knows— somehow reaching Silver and keeping him from tipping into madness. He knows exactly where Silver is now. Surrounded by darkness, feeling the physical, tortuous pain of fresh loss. He has been there himself twice before. He won’t let himself admit it, but he’s there now too. Watching Madi direct her men, talking about literature with her around the fire at the end of the day, feeling the security of her and Silver at his side as they moved through Nassau. That, Flint is beginning to realize only in its loss, was a new feeling of home. But the war has to come first. Before his grief and before his comfort. And he knows that everyone, but especially Silver, will be floundering after today. In order for this war to continue he must be a rock. He feels the familiar darkness of grief all around him, but he has had so much practice here that he knows he can walk through the fog without falling. So he will have to be the one to lead Silver out. 

He knows from experience that everyone, including Silver, will take today as a defeat. But the war is not lost. With Julius and the escaped slaves swelling their ranks, they still have a chance. And maybe the ransacking of Nassau, as devastating as it is, is the push they need to cast their ambitions higher. Maybe this isn’t a war to retake Nassau. Maybe it’s a war to retake the new world.

“A war against civilization? Really?” A bitter voice cuts through Flints thoughts. If he hadn’t just been arguing with Jack about what to do with her, Flint wouldn’t even have remembered Max’s name. If it was up to him they would have pushed her over the side or left her on the beach at the very least by now. They lost so many men because of her interception of the information about the blocked harbor, not to mention her role in the hostage situation that led to Vane’s capture and execution. But with Silver already melting down in grief he can’t afford to lose another partner to extreme emotion, and for some reason that Flint cannot fathom Jack views Max as… a partner? A friend? A lover? It’s not clear to Flint, but something prompted Jack to argue her case, so here she is, lurking outside the door to Anne’s makeshift sick room and pressing her luck.

“Yes,” Flint snaps back. “And as far as I’m concerned, you’re a part of the whole sordid system.”

“You think I am a part of civilization?” Max asks with indignation in her voice.

“You ran an inn under the pleasure of the governor and sat on his council, did you not? Betrayed your former friends, betrayed us, for his blessing. We lost good men because of you.” Flint is angry now.

Max takes a shaky breath. Has she been crying? “You have no idea what it is like to have to ask permission to exist, to have to bend and shape yourself in order to survive. I had no choice. I have never had a choice. I am not sorry for what I did.”

Flint is forcibly pushed back to a dark dining room twelve years ago. He sees Thomas effectively asking his father for permission to exist, over and over again. And look where that got him. That is the problem with people like Max. Thinking that if they ask politely enough, those in power will give them what they need. Flint knows from bitter experience that England never grants freedom without it being forcibly taken. How anyone cannot see this, especially someone with Max’s supposed intellect, is beyond him.

“I know that making a request of civilization never got anyone anything,” Flint says.

“How could you, if your idea of asking is burning down everything in your wake? I worked so hard and now everything in Nassau is gone, Anne won’t talk to me and…” Max trails off in frustration and looks at the ceiling. Flint realizes after a minute that she must be blinking back tears. She takes a breath, and then looks Flint directly in the eye. “What good is a war if it takes away the people that we love?”

Another long buried memory rises unbidden. Miranda and Thomas smiling at him across the carriage on the way home from the theatre. Miranda arguing with Flint about the way the playwright had portrayed women and love, staring him down as Thomas hooked his foot around Flint’s ankle. That safety of being bookended by the two people he cared most about. Max, he realizes, has not let go of the doorknob to Anne’s quarters since they began speaking. And suddenly it clicks into place for him; Jack’s insane defense of Max, Anne’s thicker than normal silence when her name came up. The seeming brutality of Max’s lie to Anne about Jack’s fate when he was in captivity. Flint knew from experience how loss— of a person, of a place, of a life— could make someone especially cruel to those closest to them. The ways he had sometimes hated Miranda… of course. Max loved Anne. And if Jack and Anne were two sides of the same coin… well. 

He has kept the secret of Miranda and Thomas for so long, he has somehow convinced himself he is the only one who loves this way. Especially when he finally told Silver and he interpreted Flint’s history as a referendum on their own friendship, not as the star-crossed love Flint still felt. It startles him to see this mirror of himself in Max. And to think that it has been under his nose this whole time. 

Just then he hears the clunk of Silver’s crutch on the deck above his head. His voice sounds tense as he answers a crew member’s question. Flint knows he has to get him alone, and quickly. In some ways Flint knows that Silver was right that night around the fire; he is Flint’s most important relationship now. In some other world, maybe he and Max could have been friends, their secret love connecting them across their many differences. But right now, the war matters most, and Flint knows that Silver is at least as devoted to that cause as he is. More than Max or even Jack and Anne will ever be. 

He looks at Max one more time. “You should apologize to her. Before it’s too late.” And then he turns, and walks up the stairs. Back to the sunshine, to Silver, and to the fight brewing just beyond the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a modified Marcus Aurelius quote (of course!)
> 
> In reality I think the scene between Jack and Max that this fic effectively replaces is kind of perfect, but I couldn't stop wondering what Flint would think of Max if he took two seconds to actually talk to her, and this seemed like the best place to answer that question.


End file.
